50th Birthday Ideas - The Top 5 Themes For a 50th Birthday Party

We only turn 50 once so why not celebrate it in memorable fashion with one of these fun 50th birthday ideas. Here are the top most popular 50th birthday party themes today. These will be presented in reverse order.

Mexican Fiesta
At number five is the Mexican Fiesta theme. This can be a really fun and colorful party with the right music, decorations and food. For decorations you will want to keep in mind the Mexican flag colors: red, blue and green. You can decorate with sombreros, maracas, dried chili peppers, table cloths in bright colors, small white Christmas lights strung about, ponchos, cactus, and any Mexican posters you can get your hands on. A creative idea for a game would have your guests involved in a timed nachos eating contest. Line up the contestants and load up the plates with nachos chips, and all of the fixings! Tie the contestant's hands behind their backs and have them dig in! A self serve taco bar is a fun idea for food. Your guests can create their own concoction if the nacho eating contest didn't fill them up!

Mardi Gras
At number 4 in popularity for 50th birthday ideas is a Mardi Gras party complete with beads, masks and Cajun food and decorations. Mardi Gras colors are blue, green and purple-use these colors in your decorating theme. Decorate with beads, pictures of New Orleans, jazz players, gold chocolate doubloons. Shrimp, crawfish and anything with Cajun spice make great food ideas. Be sure to offer up "hurricane" cocktails for a real authentic flavor. Mardi Gras wouldn't be Mardi Gras without lots of different beads. You can organize games fashioned around winning or using beads. Invite your guests to bring Mardi Gras masks and have a game involving the masks.

World Beer Party
Coming in at number three on our list might seem a surprise, but it is becoming more and more popular. An Around the World Beer Party can be very fun and creative if you're 50 year old is a connoisseur of beer. Obviously this party will involve varieties of beers from around the world-so you will have to find a good store that specializes in this area to help you with your selections. You can decorate in an international theme with flags from different countries. The store you buy the beer from may have samples of posters, coasters or even the cases the beer comes in to be used as decorations. Always fun at this type of party will be a time for a beer tasting-just as one might do at a wine tasting. Present some of the background and information on each beer so your guests will have fun tasting and learning at the same time. Food of the appetizer type would lend itself well for this type of 50th birthday party.

Luau Party
A tropical or Hawaiian Luau style themed party is extremely popular. People usually have tropical clothing so it is fun to dress the part for this theme. Keep the tropical theme in mind for decorations with tiki torches, shells, palm trees, lots of leis, surf boards, coconuts, pineapples, grass skirts, hula dancers, and citronella candles to ward off the bugs if outside. Pina coladas and mai tais make great drinks and if possible roasted pork for the meal. A tropical fruit salad with pineapple, mango, papaya served in a hollowed out watermelon works well and haupia, a traditional coconut pudding, for a desert idea. Games involving the limbo and hula hoops are fun for any age even at 50, especially if accompanied with music by Don Ho.

Casino Party
At number one for 50th birthday ideas, in terms of popularity today, is the Casino party theme. This is where you turn your house into an exciting Casino for the evening. For this party you will want to decorate as much as possible so that you resemble a casino. Lots of bright and colored lights, music by Las Vegas headliners playing in the background, take different size boxes and paint to look like dice and place around the room, decorate with playing cards strung out or on tables. This is a theme where you will probably be best served by calling a company that rents the gaming tables. You can just rent the tables or many companies also include the people to run the tables. Blackjack, craps and roulette are very popular games at these types of parties. You can also have a table for Poker playing Texas Hold-em. Have a no limit game that is timed, last for 30-45 minutes so everything moves fast. For those guests not into gaming, karaoke can be a lot of fun. A buffet with lots of varieties of salads and finger foods work well-just like a traditional Las Vegas buffet. A martini bar would be perfect for this theme. At the end of the evening you can auction off prizes with the money your guests have won.

Birthday Party Games for Boys

Boys are rambunctious and like to play hard. Some favorite party games that we have found our boys like. You can modify the rules of the games if you want, just have lots of fun!

Water gun fights

This is like the classic cowboys and Indians game. Boys are split up into teams and armed with squirt guns. The object is to drench the opposing team. No Hostages, just full on war. You may want to make sure that they bring extra clothes or only play this game on hot summer games. There are all sorts of water guns available, even the dollar stores have several shapes and sizes available.

Three Legged Race

With this game it is important the boys are close to the same size or one could drag and injure the other. Little boys may want to accompany an adult. Pair up the boys into teams of two. Tie the right leg to the left leg of your teams. The goal is to run together, as a unit, and finish the race first. You can make this interesting by making it an obstacle course or you can have a straightforward race from point A to point B.

War

The boys all have a gun and holster, or a sword and holster, and they play war. I encourage the children not to point their weapons at each other but to pretend to shoot at the feet of their victims and make them dance for you. Imagination usually takes control of the boys and they find a way of becoming super heroes, cowboys, bad guys, whatever their group seems to need and they act out what they can imagine.

Pirate

Boys can dress up in pirate costumes and reenact their favorite pirate movie. From treasure hunts to dueling the games are only limited by your imagination...or the imagination of the children.

Spoon race

It takes a spoon and either an orange, an apple, a tomato, a small ball, or an egg to play this game. The players all have a spoon held in their teeth and they pass the item from one another touching nothing with your hands. The item is supposed to make it to the end without falling but with younger children this may prove to be difficult.

A twist on this game is the players can place the item on the spoon then place their hands behind their backs and run to the finish line without dropping the item.